


Despoiled Of Warlike Arms

by akathecentimetre



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Dark, F/M, Gen, Kamino, Major character death - Freeform, PTSD, Resurrection, Suicide, warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-29 08:46:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3889960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akathecentimetre/pseuds/akathecentimetre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wrung out too soon after the Battle of Endor, Leia and Luke come across an unusual - and dangerous - solution. It takes them, of course, until well after the damage is already done to realize that they never should have dragged Obi-Wan back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

*

Three months after Endor, Princess Leia Organa Skywalker (soon to be Solo) has already decided that she has had enough.

She’d never been quite suited to the role of a General, Admiral, or Squadron Commander, even in the thick of the Rebellion; now that the conflict has widened and deepened, the struggle of two opponents evenly matched and equally desperate, she finds she fits war even less. What she would not give, she thinks longingly, for the quiet, menacing tension of a treaty negotiation; for the quietude of purpose that so quickly settles over Luke, for the joy of engagement that Han will never give up. She is tired of war, tired of fighting, tired of the callouses that are building up on her hands from her handling of a blaster and, more recently and under Luke’s careful watch, a lightsaber.

What she would not give, to have someone whom she could trust enough to take her place. If her father – her other father, and in many ways her true one – had still been alive, she would have given up her duties to him in a heartbeat. She’s fooling herself with this idle daydream, knows that the pragmatic pacifist Bail Organa would never consent to becoming a war commander; she only wishes she had the courage of her convictions to claim the same right.

Then, three months and two days after Yavin, suddenly and strangely, the opportunity of a way out falls into her lap in the most unexpected of ways.

Kamino is a world she heard much about as a child in her Galactic history lessons, and then again (and much more thoroughly) from Senator Organa. It has traded hands several times during the Rebellion years, and is visibly in decline, but the remembrance of its power, its potential, and its technology is enough to make her shiver as, once they have driven the final Imperial forces into its skies, she walks into the largest of the cloning facilities, still eerily lit in shades of blue and silver.

This is where it happened – this is where the Army that, willingly or unwillingly, destroyed the Republic was born. With her newly-sensitive bond to the Force, she can almost hear the shades of them, quietly begging for redemption, or forgiveness.

The remaining Kaminoans, ragged and anxious, inspect and mourn the devastation. Leia can respect their grief, if not their motivations; when her men discover a group of them trying to sneak a transport full of live pods out of the city, however, she is less inclined to be lenient.

“What’s the meaning of this?” she asks, and is wary of the look of damaged pride that resonates from the lead Kaminoan scientist’s essence. There are four pods, all in various stages of disrepair; only one is brightly-lit, luminescent, and within its murky waters a humanoid form slowly floats.

“We humbly ask that you spare us any further destruction, Princess,” the Kaminoan says politely, but she is no longer listening, because –

She recognizes this face. She recognizes it faster, indeed, than she recognized the wizened, hooded visage that came to her and Luke’s aid so long ago, on the first Death Star. This face looks like the one in the holophoto her father had given her, saying _He may have changed_ and _It was so long ago_ and _He may be our only hope._

“You,” she says sharply, and the gathered group of Kaminoans all cringe. “You’re coming with us. And so is that.”

The story comes out in fits and starts on the trip back to the fleet. Lord Vader had left strict instructions, but never visited to view his creation. The Kaminoans were unaware of the source of his reluctance to do so, and also eventually – grudgingly, and with their own particular brand of shame – admit that the process of cloning a Jedi had been more complicated than they had anticipated, and though they had finally achieved success in the physical details they had made no progress whatsoever in imprinting memories, skills, or any version of the consciousness of their subject.

Judging by what Leia knows of General Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, she’s hardly surprised at their difficulties.

Luke hates the sight of It. He visibly shudders, crossing his arms across his chest and clutching tightly at his elbow with his mechanical hand.

“Wrong,” he murmurs, and Leia sympathizes, she really does; she knows that Luke is not just perturbed by the change in looks, by the face and skin relatively uncreased by age, by the faint scars of unknown origin which are precisely mapped, legacies of conflicts not fought and hurts artificially inflicted. This is Kenobi, she has determined, in the midst of the Clone Wars, as the remnant of Anakin Skywalker would have remembered him in those last, desperate days when the Republic was shattering. This is not Luke’s Ben.

But when Leia asks him whether her idea is feasible, he hesitates. He hesitates just long enough, in fact, that she knows he’ll do it despite his doubts, despite his reservations. He’s just as exhausted as her; he’s just as bereft of guidance, still, needing a center and afraid he cannot do this on his own. He’ll try anything.

And so, they try.

“Old fool cleans up pretty good, huh?” Han says, as the tank is readied, the Kaminoans hover, and Luke closes his eyes. Han’s joke is light and meant to comfort; Leia takes his hand, squeezes it hard, and hopes to hell that this will be the turning point she’s hoping for.

 _Ben_ , Luke calls, and Leia feels the Force shift. It feels uncomfortable, unsettled, as though it is – _afraid_.

“Ben,” Luke says aloud, and then there is a burst of light, and in the tank, something thrashes.

The Force _screams_.

“No,” Luke gasps, and he opens his eyes and flies forward, trying to peer through the sloshing solution; Leia hurries to join him, ignoring the worried whispers of the Kaminoans at their controls.

“Turn it off,” Luke orders. “Turn it off, kill the host!”

“We cannot – ” says one of the Kaminoans, and their gathered babble nearly drowns out the thud of a clenched fist on the inside of the thick glass.

Luke reaches over the control panel and presses something; the tank lowers and tilts, and from the surface two hands suddenly emerge; a dripping, copper-haired head; the rebreather is torn from the mouth and dropped on the floor so It can take in huge, shuddering gasps of air before It thuds into a heap on the floor.

There is blood pouring from the edges of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s eyes, at the corner of his mouth, diluting and trickling through the water. Only his voice, when he speaks, is familiar, albeit hoarse and horrified – though it is that, perhaps more than anything else, which suddenly reinforces to Leia just what a mistake she’s made.

“What have you done?”

*

He asks for privacy, and he gets it. Han watches Leia carefully, lounging and feigning laziness, while she finds something from her crew’s meagre stores of Alderaanian attire to send into the private room with a droid; she settles on a blue robe which reminds her of her father, ankle-long and elegant. Neither she nor Luke have any Jedi clothing to offer.

The droid’s departure heralds Luke’s arrival. “He doesn’t want to see me,” he sighs, and settles down with them to wait.

“Anyone gonna explain what happened back there?” Han says eventually, raising both eyebrows. “Because I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the plan.”

“The Force was angry,” Leia says, frustration pricking at her, and Luke nods his agreement.

“We’ve upset some sort of balance, that’s for sure. Just because he still existed within its grace doesn’t mean he was meant to travel between planes,” Luke muses. “Then again – the Force didn’t stop us from doing it, in the end. He’s _here,_ ” he adds, and there is definitely an undercurrent of eager, curious awe in his voice. On some level, he’s happy about this, relieved, grateful.

Leia can only hope she can be, too.

When, eventually, the droid comes trundling back to them, it bears the message that the resurrected Master would like to speak to the Princess. She looks at Luke, who shows no disappointment that he is not Obi-Wan’s first request; he has a better grasp on his emotions than she does hers. Han winks at her for strength, and she goes.

The robe suits him. Standing as he is at the wide window in his cabin, staring out over the Endor system, he reminds her of nobles at her father’s palace on Alderaan, known on sight to be wise and gracious.

“Princess,” he murmurs, and turns. He is dry and calm, his hands thrust into his wide sleeves, beard trimmed and hair neatly parted. He fits, suddenly, the sort of handsome figure she imagined in her mind’s eye when her father described his wartime exploits. “I regret that this is our first proper meeting.”

There is still blood beading at the corner of his right eye. He catches her staring, and reaches up briefly to wipe it away; she senses it is not the first time he’s had to do that in the last hour. His Force presence surrounds her, ebbing and surging, a core of bright light partially obscured by outraged pain.

“Your bearing reminds me so much of your father,” he says quietly, not moving any closer to her. A brief shadow crosses his face, and then he lets out a low chuckle. “Excuse me. I should clarify – your father, the Senator.”

“Not the Jedi?”

“Perhaps,” he replies, tilting his head slightly. “When I know you better.”

“Will I?” she finds herself nervous at the implications of the question, but it needs to be asked.

Obi-Wan swipes at his eye again, his fingers stained with red. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

He sounds flat. Already gone. Leia’s guilt settles deep in her stomach, coagulates, hardens.

“I am not meant to be here,” he says abruptly, his face blank and empty, and something in the way the Force swirls at his words frightens her. “You cannot possibly imagine what I lost in life, and now you have torn away everything I regained. What is this view compared to the sensation of inhabiting stardust? What is this,” he continues, gesturing to his fake body, taking a step towards her, “compared to my existence as pure light?”

A small, powerful hand grips her shoulder. It is becoming harder and harder to stand her ground, and as though from far away, she is aware that Luke is coming, that Luke, too, is afraid.

“What are you,” Kenobi whispered, blue eyes blazing, “compared to the company of loved ones I waited so long to see?”

The door opens behind Leia; Luke enters, steps up to Leia’s side, looks at Obi-Wan’s hand clutching Leia’s arm.

The Master’s eyes slide shut; a sigh rolls through him, slumps his shoulders and bows his head. “Skywalker,” he says slowly, as though the name is thick and unwelcome on his tongue. “I am not myself. My control is not what it should be. If you want to keep me alive, you had best restrain me.”

“Yes, Master,” Luke murmurs sadly.

Three droids, set to arm themselves at a moment’s notice, escort him towards the cruiser’s detention block; he goes quietly, upright and measured, leaving Luke and Leia staring at each other in silence.

“What now?” Leia asks, and already knows the answer she will get.

“I don’t know, Leia. I just don’t know.”

*

**TBC**

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This idea has been floating around in my head for a while and just needed to be gotten down in writing, but apart from this beginning I have no idea where to go with it - or rather, I can think of too _many_ directions in which it could go. To that end, the following chapters (maybe 3 or 4 of them) will each explore a different potential path for resurrected!Obi-Wan, jumping off from this beginning. If you have any suggestions for the 'verse, do chime in!


	2. Variant One: RED

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all for your comments on the Introduction - I decided I'd dabble with five different possible outcomes for the idea of resurrected!Obi, the first of which is the shortest and darkest, and also the most vague in terms of what's actually going on - I hope you'll forgive me my inscrutability! Coming next are 'Black,' 'Grey,' 'White,' and finally 'Gold.'
> 
> **WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH.**

*

Leia falls asleep in the warm, affirming circle of Han’s arms, and dreams more vividly than she has ever done in her life.

This is not the stuff of childhood nightmares, for it is imbued with too much certainty. The flames that flicker at the edges of her vision leave real burns. Deep below her, in the bowels of the Alliance flagship, something is festering and curdling into blackened flesh. Voices that she doesn’t recognize are calling, distantly, desperately, for her to wake; it takes Han’s hands, real hands, to drag her there.

“Damn, sweetheart,” he says groggily, uncurling her nails from her palms. “What the hell – ?”

She has slept nearly a full cycle, at least, she sees from their shared chrono – and she has gotten her shaking under control by the time Luke barges into their room, wide-eyed and disheveled.

“Hey, man,” Han says, tendrils of real annoyance and concern for Leia finally worming through his tone. “I called dibs. I mean, besides the whole sibling Thing – ”

“Something’s wrong,” Luke says quietly, and Leia finds herself nodding frantically into Han’s shoulder.

“Is this – ” She takes a breath, and tries again. “Is this what the Dark Side feels like?”

“Dark, yes,” Luke says, cupping one of her hands between both of his. “But _not_ Sith. Not yet. Will you come?”

Leia feels it pressing in on her, from all sides, harder and harder, as the turbolift descends. By the time they reach the detention block, it feels like she is drawing darkness and pain into her lungs with every breath.

Kenobi is sitting calmly in his cell, his manacled hands in his lap. The two surveillance droids assigned to stand guard outside the barrier-door lie melted and sullenly sparking, oozing metal innards across the floor; Leia feels Luke spare a moment of grief even for the mechanical before he steps up to the shimmering force-field.

“Are you alright, Master?”

“A foolish question,” Kenobi says eventually, his voice hardly above a murmur. His eyes are closed, but move restlessly below their lids. “If you did not already know the answer, you would not be here.”

“I can feel you searching,” Luke says, and suddenly the pieces fall into place for Leia; that’s what this malevolence is doing, this frustration, this anger. It spreads through their veins and then moves on, as though unsatisfied with what it finds – the Force is moaning, she realizes, with its unconscious rearrangement. “What is it you are looking for?”

“They will not speak to me,” Obi-Wan says, and opens his eyes. When he stands and comes up close to the barrier he is pure grace and instantaneous with it, and Leia takes an involuntary step back. “I am an abomination, and am being treated as such.”

“Surely not,” Luke says hastily, unease in his frown. “The Force would not – ”

“The Force _does_ , and the longer it is denied me the faster I will fall,” Kenobi hisses.

He reaches through the barrier, electricity sparking along his skin, and grabs Luke by the wrist; alarms blare, and, distantly, Leia senses Han starting to run.

“I will not fight you, Master,” Luke chokes out.

“And you know full well, apprentice mine, that I cannot survive this.”

Kenobi is hardly audible above the din, above the crackle of lightning, above the running of booted feet. Leia’s Force senses are barely attuned, but even she can feel what must now be tearing through Luke a hundred-fold – tendrils of the Force, twisting and writhing, not quite tainted but desperate in their need. They speak the names of beings Leia assumes must be long dead; they scream pleas for understanding, for some sort of existence that makes sense, that has not bent space and time.

A flash of light, then, as Han reaches Leia’s side at the head of a troop of guards, and – Kenobi is gone.

“He must not escape this ship,” Luke says into Leia’s ear in the resulting confusion. “He will keep searching, and keep destroying.”

“I had so many questions,” he says later, sorrowfully, when the ship’s internal tracking systems have traced the missing General to the hangar bays, and that whole quadrant of the ship has been sealed off from the bridge. Behind them, the admirals are debating whether to simply open the airlocks, for surely that would do the trick; Leia knows, though, that she and Luke and Han and Chewie will be going down there, will be going armed, with words and lasers and lightsabers at hand.

“I’m sorry,” Leia says. She has spent the past few years of her life being proved wrong again and again; most often her failures have taught her something, but in this case she is struggling to find any consolation in her error. “It was my idea, and it wasn’t fair. To him.”

“You had no way of knowing,” Luke says earnestly. “I should have known. I should have known more of the Force by now, and more of him. So much lost, Leia,” he adds, then, quieter, his eyes full of an ageless wisdom. “So much we may never regain.”

Han and Chewie go into the hangar first, and when they wave Luke and Leia in they find Kenobi standing at an access panel for the nearest starfighter, his hand stilling on the controls when he senses their presences. He is still in Leia’s Alderaanian robe; the contrast between his outward dignity and the turmoil Leia can feel warring in his soul is visually and mentally incomprehensible.

“Luke,” he says quietly. “I cannot stop it. I feel – ” he pauses, as though merely to speak is an unbearable struggle. “I feel as though the galaxy has ripped at its seams.”

“We did that,” Luke says, softly, sorrowfully, his hand wrapped tightly around the hilt of his lightsaber. “If you will permit us, we can try to help. I am no Master, but I could – ”

He falls silent when confronted by the clear denial that flashes across Kenobi’s face.

“What is a Jedi,” Kenobi asks, abruptly, his tone suddenly moderating into something fatherly, instructive, “if they no longer have control over their choices?”

“The Force has fated some,” Luke says slowly.

“Hardly,” Kenobi interrupts. “Even those supposedly singled out for a greater purpose only fulfill or destroy those futures by means of their _own wills_.”

He takes a step forward, and next to Leia, Luke’s lightsaber ignites. She can feel the heat of it washing over her skin.

“I am become _compulsion_ ,” Kenobi whispers harshly. “I must be stopped.”

Leia’s lightsaber – built for her by Luke, a pale blue, one whose essence she is only just starting to understand – rips its way out of her hand. By the time it has landed in Kenobi’s palm, Luke has leapt forward and engaged him; Han has rushed forward, grabbed Leia around the waist, dragged her back behind Chewie’s bulk.

“Damn,” Han breathes, and above her, Leia hears Chewie rumble with unintentional surprise. “The old man can _fight_.”

Leia has never seen anything like it. She’s never seen Luke do this, for a start – what he had done on Tatooine while rescuing her and Han now seems like child’s play as he flips and darts, parries, blocks, the Force clearly and visibly guiding every minutia of his movement.

But Kenobi – Kenobi is beyond anything she has ever seen, beyond anything, she knows with some sort of strange certainty, that exists in the galaxy twenty years after the Jedi’s fall. He is a warrior of old, completely and utterly in tune with his body and his surroundings, the slightest of turns putting Luke at a disadvantage, the most innocuous feints bringing on a fierce attack.

Leia sees colors flaring in her mind’s eye, blue and gold and red.

“Screw this,” Han says tightly, finally standing in a rush; he and Chewie open fire together, and Kenobi turns to deflect their laser bolts.

Luke’s face goes rigid, and Leia wishes she had been the one to shoot, to take on the burden of his guilt.

Kenobi looks curiously down at the green lightsaber through his midsection, and then, to Leia’s horror, lets out a wracking, hoarse laugh.

“That’s twice, now,” he murmurs, and sways heavily as Luke withdraws. “I think that’s a new record.”

When he falls, it is into Leia’s arms.

They bury the clone body with full military honors; this, at least, Luke says, is something he was always owed. When the tube is shot out into space, programmed to drift into the path of a nearby star going supernova, Luke’s pale face begins to regain some of its color; several hours later, Leia, looking for him on one of the observation decks, sees him speaking to a tall, cloaked figure who quietly and quickly disappears into thin air as she approaches.

“Was that him?”

“No,” Luke says tiredly, as he gathers her up into a hug. “But it was someone who was searching for him, and they will find him.”

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Leia confesses, saying it out loud for the first time even though she has been pursuing this line of thought in her mind for what feels like months. “This world you say I’m a part of, now – I don’t know if I want to understand it.”

“We’re never going to be perfect, Leia,” he says, sounding so much older than he is, than he _should_ be, that it makes her sadness turn solid and heavy in her gut. “We are without guides, and it will take time.

“But,” he continues, and his eyes are reflecting starlight – “when we do it right, you will know. And you’ll never want to turn back.”

She feels it then, light and tentative – a bright light, shimmering into being around them, sometimes fading, sometimes sparking, always pure.

“Gods speed you, Master,” Luke whispers, and Leia repeats his words in her mind.

The light winks, and vanishes, and Leia takes what feels like her first and deepest breath.

*


	3. Variant Two: BLACK

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **WARNINGS for this chapter: major character death, suicide, PTSD.**

*

Leia dreams of battlefields and corpses.

She dreams of men in white armor, stormtroopers and yet far from them, falling in droves. She dreams of millions of identical hearts and faces, winking out of existence and taking the soul of a great Republic with them.

She wakes with her heart hammering in her chest, and her hands absently rubbing against each other, as though to scrub blood from her palms.

When she goes down to the detention block, slipping out from underneath Han’s arm without waking him, the ship is still firmly in its sleep cycle, with minimal guards acknowledging her presence and the overhead lights in the corridors still dim. When she steps up to the barrier that separates her from Kenobi, however, it is easy for Leia to see that he has not slept. He is kneeling in the center of the cell, every atom of him telling her that only a Jedi could look like this, with each limb in perfect balance even when he is shackled.

“Princess,” he murmurs, before she can speak, his eyes firmly closed. “I owe you an apology.”

The very air around Leia is heavy with sorrow as she reaches for the right words. “Who were those soldiers?”

“My brothers,” Kenobi says quietly. “And our murderers.

“Forgive me,” he adds, with a sigh, and it is as though some sort of spell has been broken as he shifts where he sits, and Leia feels the Force suddenly mute itself, straining to keep the darkness at bay. “I am finding it – difficult to maintain a firm grasp on time, you see. The sense of dislocation is acute.”

Leia folds herself down until she is sitting cross-legged on the floor, wrapping her arms around herself to keep out the chill of the prison. “You can feel that? You’re – aware of it?”

“I am aware of everything,” he whispers. He is looking at the floor in front of his knees, as though to look at her will break him. “I can no longer tell what is my present, and what is my past.”

 _Clones_ , she thinks suddenly, remembering lessons taken at her father’s knee when she was small, lessons full of secrets and death and promises that she would keep silent. “What happened to them?”

“They committed genocide against their will. Most are no longer alive. I can see them,” Obi-Wan says, lifting his head, suddenly, and Leia sees that his eyes are full of starlight. “I felt them, in the Force, when I was there. I felt them coming to join me – ”

Leia reels back as memories flood through her via the Force, so quickly none of them are distinct but for the pain they bring. _They had names_ , she thinks wildly, horrified, and then Kenobi drops his gaze, and just like that, the agony ends.

“Princess,” he says urgently, reaching out and only stopping when the palm of his hand hits the barrier, as she lies on her back, gasping. “Princess, you must leave my presence.”

It takes her a long time to sit back up, and stare in bewilderment, with the utmost pity, at his bowed head. “Maybe – maybe Luke can – ”

“Luke cannot,” he says instantly, still not looking up. “And even if he could, I suspect the effort would harm him, too. I will try to meditate. I will try to be of use, but I cannot promise – ”

“Don’t,” she murmurs, and then – with the Force telling her she must, with the Force telling her it is the right thing to do – she reaches out herself, and presses her palm to his, fancying she can sense something of him through the electricity sparking along her skin. “Don’t you dare blame yourself. Let us try.”

“Ah, Leia,” he says, so softly she can barely hear him, though she fancies there is fondness there, and, more distantly, amusement that speaks of a love so deep and ageless it is bound up with the fabric of the galaxy itself. “This poor old man has lost too much. I never wanted this to be your burden, too.”

She gets up, and staggers, and it takes her a long time to find her way back to her bed, where she dares not sleep.

When it is morning, she finds Luke alone in his cabin, staring at a wall and flinching, hard, shakes rattling his bones.

“What is it?”

“Jedi,” he croaks. “I see them dying. Leia, I see them dying _everywhere_.”

He tells her about them, one by one, as she holds him close. This shake is a tall Cerean, lying frozen in the snow on Mygeeto. This tremor, a beautiful Tholothian gunned down on Saleucami. This stilted cry a shrieking Korun, dismembered, falling to his death with lightning burning him from the inside out.

It goes on, and on, and on, until Leia loses track of time, until finally, Luke slumps back, exhausted, and stares at the ceiling of his tiny quarters with tears standing in the corners of his eyes.

“I had no idea,” he sobs, and Leia, just as disoriented even though the Force has only touched her briefly with its pain and not the full detail of its grief, finds it is all she can do to cry with him.

There is a brief respite. There is an hour, perhaps, when they feel nothing, and Luke begins to regain his calm.

But then Han comes to find them, with raging anger in his eyes, and it begins again.

“I thought better of the Alliance,” Han spits out. He grabs at the badge on his coat, the only symbol of his allegiance that he had agreed to wear, and even then only after he had thoroughly earned it on Endor, and throws it at Leia’s feet while the brother and sister stare up at him, exhausted and completely bewildered. “It’s already too much that you brought the old man back, but now you’re fucking doing _this?_ Count me the hell out of your rebellion, Your Worshipfulness. I’ll be fucking off.”

“Han!” Leia calls, and just about manages to stop him before he reaches the door, grabbing onto him hard so she doesn’t fall. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I can _see_ it, Leia,” Han hisses, and behind her Leia hears Luke sigh. “I went through it myself at that monster’s hands for no reason – do you really think I’ll be hanging around while your precious Admirals do it to him, too?”

“Han,” Luke says sharply, and when they both turn to him they see the new Jedi standing, suddenly all strength and pity and righteousness. “Come with me.”

“Oh no, I’m not going _anywhere_ I don’t choose to go, not anymore – ”

“You will.”

Han comes quietly, his fury transmuted into a seething silence, and he does not let Leia touch him – not until they are standing at Kenobi’s cell again, and Han’s lips part and his eyes widen at the sight of the resurrected Jedi sitting quietly, unharmed, in that same pose of meditation Leia had found so calming.

“Doesn’t make sense,” Han says, and barely even notices when Leia slips her arm through his. “I saw – ”

“Obi-Wan Kenobi died during the Battle of Jabiim,” the clone says, dreamlike, as though from very far away. Luke takes a step closer, as underneath their lids, Kenobi’s eyes roll back into his head. “He died there, and the Light very nearly died with him.”

“Tell us,” Luke whispers.

“Dooku’s apprentice wanted far more than revenge,” that same, lilting voice says. “She took Kenobi from the battlefield knowing the galaxy thought him dead, and she denied him the Force, and then she sought to break him. She did not succeed.”

Leia looks up at Han’s face, at the lines of deep displeasure around his mouth which only appear when he is remembering a past hurt. She can still hear him screaming on Bespin.

 _Gods, and now he has seen_ –

“All the while, Kenobi’s apprentice searched for him,” the clone intones, and Luke’s breath catches. “He very nearly went mad with grief at the loss of his master. Small steps,” Kenobi says, and then his eyes open, and finally the grief physically overtakes him, sets his hands clutching at air and his shoulders hitching. “Small steps into the dark – ”

Luke deactivates the force-field, steps into the room, and falls to his knees. It takes what feels like hours, what feels like days, with Leia and Han watching and knowing that they are the only things keeping Luke upright, before the swirling miasma of the Force in distress subsides.

Obi-Wan sighs, brings his shackled hands up the few inches they need to grasp at the front of Luke’s tunics, their foreheads touching in mutual meditation. “You are strong, young one, and I am proud of you,” he murmurs. “But you cannot carry me forever.”

“It might stop,” Luke says, and Leia finds herself projecting towards Kenobi, willing him the same hope.

 _I have known hope_ , whispers that same sad, unbearably old voice, ringing in Leia’s ears. _And now I know its absence. You should keep it for yourself, Princess._

“You must let me go,” the General says then, out loud, and Leia cannot bear the kindness with which he looks upon Luke, disregarding so entirely his own suffering. “You must, Luke – before the worst of it is remembered.”

“The worst,” Luke says, on the wheeze of a disbelieving laugh.

“Sometimes a single loss is worth more than all the massacres in the universe,” Kenobi whispers. “Your Grand-master would not forgive me your destruction, and neither would either of your fathers.”

They do not consult with the Admirals before Han picks out a small ship, one due for repairs and therefore not likely to be missed for some time; no doubt the higher-ups in the Alliance, Mon Mothma especially, would protest their choice. The transfer from the cell block is done quietly, with Leia both leading the way and providing Kenobi with a long cloak which somehow hides him instantly from sight, both his physical- and Force-presences vanishing into its shadows.

“Where will you go?” Leia asks quietly as they walk, and beside her she feels Luke stiffen for reasons unknown.

“Not far,” Kenobi says, that same calm smile on his face, despite the pain that is rising in his eyes and clearly threatening to overwhelm him. “This journey will be short.”

“Master,” Luke says abruptly, as they come to the bottom of the ramp leading up into the little cargo ship, with Han waiting warily at the top. Luke fishes briefly inside his tunic, and Leia nearly gasps at what he draws out – it is a lightsaber, one she may never have seen before, with a golden mount and ridged black handle.

“Ah,” Obi-Wan sighs, air slowly leaking out of him as he takes it in his hands. “How did you – ”

“Our father kept it. I found it on his body.”

“Did he, now,” Kenobi murmurs. He reaches out with one hand, which is instantly clasped between both of Luke’s. “Thank you for this gift, apprentice mine.”

“It was always yours to give,” Luke says cryptically, and, just as abruptly as he had spoken, he suddenly turns away, and is gone.

“Princess,” Obi-Wan says. The bow he gives her places him into another world, one whose civilities have been long since forgotten. “I shall give them your love. Forever, it will guide your path.”

He has swept up the ramp, and it is closing, before she realizes that what he has said is not a blessing but another of his prophecies. Han has to grab her, has to drag her back, from running into the ship as the engines start and the blast doors start to open.

“Damnit, sweetheart, calm down – ”

“No! He can’t just leave!”

But leave he does, and what happens next runs through Leia’s mind as clearly as if she is seeing it with her own eyes. She hears the hum of the lightsaber, the quiet gasp of pain; she feels, as the little ship disappears into the distance, jumping into hyperspace on autopilot and headed gods knew where, the flickering candle that had been Obi-Wan Kenobi being snuffed out.

“It is not the way of the Jedi,” Luke says to her, much later, when she is done for the moment with her own tallying of griefs and deaths and needs his company, needs his light. His face is weathered with lines of worry and a nameless concern. “I hope he finds his way back.”

She finds herself far more certain of this – especially when, after a long night of apologies and arguing and remaking the love frayed by their misunderstandings, she falls asleep with Han and dreams of meadows, and dual suns over a desert, and the peace that silence brings.

And then, suddenly, the faces of those she loved and loves, in utter repose, and all a part of the same cosmic entity –

 _Thank you_ , Leia whispers, and Kenobi vanishes, and when she wakes it is as though she never dreamt at all.

*


	4. Variant Three: GREY

*

Leia dreams of nothing at all.

She wakes with her mouth dry and her eyes gummed, as though something heavy and stifling has settled over her in her sleep; the air, when she shrugs herself out from under Han’s arm and breathes in deep, is thick and slow-moving.

The sense that she is wading through mud with every step does not fade as she makes her way down to the quiet detention block; if anything, it intensifies, dragging downward at her limbs. Luke meets her there, looking as tired as she feels, and their mutual, silent nod of support doesn’t seem to auger either hope or determination, merely acquiescence.

They are alone when they approach Kenobi’s cell, and he does not seem awake. The tendrils of the Force that Leia can sense seem weak, fading away in her peripheral vision; Luke frowns slightly, and murmurs _meditation_ , but not in a tone which suggests he is pleased at this turn of events.

Kenobi opens his eyes, and looks at them; he is sitting up against one of the walls of the cell, curled slightly inwards, and his gaze is unfocused.

“I take it it is morning,” he rasps, and Luke, with a small gasp of concern, moves closer. “The night seemed very long.”

“Master?” Luke asks, and then the other Jedi coughs. There is blood in his mouth; it stains his teeth red.

Luke’s quiet fury is more terrifying than anything Leia thinks she could scream and shout at the Kaminoan scientists as their charge is removed from his cell; their protestations and complaints and justifications seem to mean nothing in the face of this new, rapidly-approaching loss. The clone’s body is disintegrating, they say. It cannot withstand the pressures of the soul it houses.

There is nothing more to be done. They can only wait.

The next time she sees Kenobi, he is in a quiet parody of a hospital bed, a med droid diligent at his side on one of the side decks, which has been cleared of all personnel. The stars they pass through in hyperspace cast brilliant, streaking lights across the dark floor; and for hours, Obi-Wan Kenobi sleeps undisturbed but for the oxygen and plasma keeping him alive.

When he wakes, he asks to see Mon Mothma first. Leia watches their encounter from afar, watches the tall, dignified Senator grasping a pale hand between her own, watches the woman she has admired all of her life weep like a child. Their conversation is halting, the gaps of years clearly too large to be bridged in so short, so insignificant a time.

It takes everything Leia has not to follow hard on the Senator’s heels when she emerges, as upright as ever and her eyes finally run dry. It turns out that she does not have long to wait, however: a gentle, pained amusement seems to seep into her mind, only gradually forming comprehensible words.

 _Well, do come in. I’m not quite dead yet, after all_.

And so she goes. The Jedi Master’s eyes are closed when she sits gingerly by his side, but soon enough they open, and blink slowly at her before Kenobi speaks.

“For a moment, I thought you were your mother.”

“Luke said the same thing – once he had worked it out, and found holos of her.”

“The unexpected advantages of publicity.” Kenobi chuckles weakly, and coughs again. “You will find yourself well-supplied on that score.”

“There are no holos of you. Or of V – of my father.”

“No, I suppose there wouldn’t be,” he sighs, a slight frown furrowing his brow. “Unless they were wanted posters, which is hardly a flattering genre.”

Leia laughs; she can’t help herself, though it hurts. This is what she has waited so long for, and now she has hours, at most, before it is taken away again.

A thin hand takes hers. She shifts closer, looking down to examine old bruises on knuckles and the scars of surgeries and wounds, all to avoid his gaze. She does not think she can bear her shame, not now.

“What is it, my dear?” he asks, and his kindness is so obvious that it makes her want to scream.

“I’m sorry to put you through this,” she finally confesses, quietly. “You’re dying, and all for my selfish, stupid idea.”

“It is not what I expected death to feel like, it is true,” he says, and when she does dare to look up she finds that he is, amazingly, smiling. “My experience of it has been as a light suddenly extinguished, a blade on a battlefield. This slow descent is – ”

“Painful? I can get the droid to adjust your meds – ”

“A little, maybe. But no, it seems – strangely appropriate. Perhaps this is the death I was meant to have, or the one I expected.” Kenobi lifts his face briefly, lets a passing star shed its light upon him. “The Force is very close. Can you hear it?”

Leia can, once she takes the time to listen. She had mistaken it for the hum of the starship’s engines, but it is something else entirely – it sounds like water rushing down a stream, like wind on a sand dune. It erases her last memories of Tatooine and Alderaan and leaves only calm in their wake so swiftly that she has to open her eyes and simply marvel at it.

As though reading her mind, Kenobi presses her hand more firmly, though she can feel the muscle weakness beneath her fingers and knows how much this effort is costing him.

“I felt both your fathers pass into it,” he rasps, barely above a whisper. “They were not afraid, and neither will I be.”

It is the unsolicited answer to a question Leia had never realized she had held in her heart for so long. She bends forward, puts her head on the Jedi’s shoulder, and takes her turn to weep.

She has no remembrance of how long it is before Luke joins her, lifting her up with strong hands on her shoulders. Kenobi’s hand has gone limp beneath hers, and he struggles for breath; his eyes, however, tell them all (for Han has joined them too, has both hands on Leia’s waist and his chin on her shoulder as though he is a full-body crutch) that he is not finished yet.

“You mean to restore the Jedi?” he asks Luke, one hand at his throat as though grasping for air. Luke nods, and leans closer. “Then listen…”

He talks for nearly an hour, growing weaker with every word. He talks of dusty journals filled with his own hand, hidden behind a wall in the Tatooine desert; he lists names, names of those certainly dead but who have left clues to their lives around the universe, of those possibly alive and possibly dead, of those alive who are hiding, of those alive who have fought and are gods know where. He speaks of mistakes, and paths too certain, and paths not taken, and stops, his breath rattling in his chest, before admitting that he has no answers to these deadly threats.

He speaks of their mother, and Leia chooses to believe that the tears standing in his eyes are a betrayal of his body. He speaks of their father, and Luke winces, and Leia leans forward, and Kenobi laughs, a horrible, wracking sound, and says something about how Anakin, if he had been a politician, would have brought down the Senate within a week. (It is still a strange sound to her, that name; she has spent so much of her life hating the man that was Vader that she suspects it will take a lot longer for her not to associate that dark specter with his former name.)

And then Kenobi stops, and looks at the three of them in turn, finally settling on Han’s face, and his smile is weak but brilliant. “The Force weaves its patterns in such interesting ways,” he murmurs, and finally closes his eyes.

“Hey,” Han says, and reaches forward as though he is suddenly seeking an answer of his own. “Hey, old man, don’t – ”

It takes a while longer, and they are with him to the end. He does not wake again; the Force, on the other hand, strengthens and sings, to the point that Luke stares wonderingly into thin air and Leia feels it pricking the surface of her skin, and even Han squints into the semi-darkness as though catching sight of something normally invisible.

His passing is so quiet that for a long moment, Leia doesn’t realize what has happened at all.

Hours later, long after the body has been removed, she finds Luke still standing on that same deck, looking out over the stars.

“It was such a short time ago, Leia,” he says, as though marveling at it. “We are only just as old as the loss of that whole world.”

“You’re going away again, aren’t you.”

Luke sighs, and nods. “I need to get to Tatooine. If Ben’s work is still intact, there are untold treasures waiting for me.”

He turns, and takes Leia’s hands in between his. “He left something for you, too. I can feel it. What did he say?”

There is a bright light over Luke’s shoulder, to which he is apparently oblivious. As Leia watches, it sharpens and coalesces into a trim, lithe form, layered over with thick, soft tunics, all ablaze.

Kenobi lifts a ghostly finger to his lips, and grins.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Leia says to Luke, and he raises his eyebrows. “It was for me, and only me.”

Kenobi nods, a sage of centuries long gone, and vanishes.

Luke’s frown is one of confusion, and concern. “Leia, you mustn’t blame yourself for this – ”

“I don’t. I promise you,” she says, stronger, feeling many different kinds of support coursing through her veins. “I don’t regret this for a second.”

For the first time since the start of their new war, she feels entirely awake.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _It gets more cheerful from here, honest!_


	5. Variant Four: WHITE

*

Leia has dreamed of many faces over her years of war. Most often, they are the faces of the dead – of her mother and father, of friends disintegrated, denied the chance to fight or speak. Her memories of them mutate, put words into their mouths that she would hear them say.

She wakes knowing that this time, her mind has been overflowing with a cast of strangers. The sensation of knowing they are dead remains, and is in fact acute; but this realization brings with it surprisingly little sorrow. Deep voices have murmured to her – she glimpses the shadows of tall figures at a distance, remembers her father’s smile and wit refracted through the thoughts and admiration of another not herself.

She is alone, in the early hours before the ship is due to stir itself and come to life and out of hyperspace, when she steps into the cell block and finds Kenobi awake and waiting for her. He stands with his back to her, at first, looking at nothing but a bulkhead as though his eyes can see right through it to the stars flashing by beyond it, as though he wants to join them. When he turns, Leia can see that his eye, the one physical proof of his alien form, must have kept bleeding into the night; there is a streak of red on his cheek, left to dry and cool.

“Princess,” he says, and gives her, over his crossed arms, a brief bow. She can sense no menace in him, not anymore, though the Force still seems to hum lowly around him as though seeking entry, anxious for both of their well-beings. “I apologize for disturbing you.”

“Disturbing?” she asks, and takes a moment to think; her mind makes the assumption quickly, jumping from puzzling over her dreams to thinking _Oh_ , and then, ever so briefly, to the admiration and flattery of being privy to the thoughts of one so long-sought. “That was you.”

“I have been speaking to them all night,” Kenobi says vaguely; his face takes on that distant aspect again, and as he turns, takes a few wandering steps across the cell (steps, Leia realizes, that he must have repeated again and again since they had left him here), his eyes seem to be seeking out the shades of all those left behind. “I am still very close to them, it seems. They are confused as to where and why I have gone.”

That is enough to make Leia cringe, though she thinks that he did not mean his words to wound. “I’m sorry.”

“Do not be.” The smile he gives her is reluctant, but no less sincere for his circumstances. “I was ever a creature of purpose, Your Highness. It simply has not been made clear to me yet.”

Leia reaches sideways. When her palm hits the release for the force field, Kenobi’s gaze turns wary; he stands still and just looks at her as the cell is left open, making no move to step over its threshold.

“Are you sure?” he asks, eventually. “I might be destined to work against you and what you have done.”

“I’ll take that chance,” she says, and, beckoning, motions for him to follow. “And besides,” she says over her shoulder, not turning far enough to see whether he is moving yet, “Luke has been trying very hard to teach me that our wills supersede that of the Force. So I think I will trust you and myself a little longer.”

He is silent beside her in the elevator; when they emerge into her stateroom it is still dark and quiet, with Han clearly still slumbering in their bed and C-3PO quietly shut down in a corner of the lounge. With his hands in his sleeves, Kenobi goes directly to the wide portholes while Leia brings up the lights; the flash of hyperspace seems to entrance him, and once again, Leia thinks that if it were not for the body he now wears, the Jedi would exist as starlight alone.

When he turns away, however, there is new curiosity in his face – or, perhaps, simply a need to catalogue, to investigate, to make sure he is completely aware of his surroundings, as he walks quietly around the edges of the room. Leia sits and waits, knowing that there is little she can understand of this, despite her burning impatience to ask her questions; she waits and watches as he pauses and looks, with a certain familiar, exasperated fondness, at C-3PO’s metal face; his hands trace the edges of the wide sofas as he walks past, trailing fingers; he stops ever so briefly at the sight of himself in the mirrored edge of chrome walls, and then, dispassionately, continues on.

“Yes,” he says, abruptly, startling Leia into blinking.

“Yes to what?”

“To your first question.”

Something rises immediately up Leia’s throat, closes off her ability to breathe or speak.

Kenobi approaches – he seems surprised, at first, at the tears that are pricking at the corners of her eyes, but his expression quickly softens. Pulled up into his fingers, the material of his borrowed clothes is soft, still smells of Alderaan, when he holds it briefly to her cheek and dabs them away.

“They are not able to manifest completely, of course,” he says gently. “Only a few trained Jedi have learned the art. But they are here, nonetheless, and their love is as endless as ever.”

“They loved you,” she says, laughing at herself, hoarse and sniffling. “They risked everything to tell me about Master Kenobi, and how one day, he’d come back.”

“I know,” he says, and sits, finally, next to her; every muscle of him is still and calm, speaks to a discipline made all the more rigid by uncertainty. “I always marveled at it – their trust.”

“From all I can tell, it was earned.”

Kenobi blinks; he looks away from her, his hands fold into each other as though this simple act will hide him entirely from the world. “It was not – not by the end.”

 _My second question_ , Leia remembers.

“If nothing else,” Kenobi continues, and now there is a small twist to his mouth, some source of sorrow rising up in the Force around them – “this strange revival of mine has allowed me the opportunity to apologize for my faithlessness.”

“You have nothing to apologize for.”

“For losing hope?” This time his look is sharp, condescending, however brief. “I no longer expected Anakin’s redemption. From so far away, I knew nothing of Bail’s work, or Breha’s. I denigrated the only parents Luke had ever known, and your message – ”

Here he pauses, and looks down again, and still, Leia is overwhelmed by the absurdity of this: of the sight of one of the galaxy’s oldest and wisest beings believing himself unworthy. “I did not know you,” he adds simply. “I held no confidence even in the idea that Padme Amidala’s daughter could save anything.”

There is a quiet sound behind them, the small _whoosh_ of a door opening; beyond, Leia hears quiet footsteps that herald Luke’s arrival, and at his entrance there is also a growing sound of disgruntled wakefulness that must come from Han as he struggles back into the world.

“You came anyway,” she says. Luke, approaching, smiles at her, and she knows it was the right thing to say; knows that, despite the incredible contrast between Luke’s easy, rising stride and the unmoving lines of tension in Kenobi’s back, she has stated a truth which cannot be so easily dismissed, or ever discounted.

 _Trust me_ , she thinks. _Trust us._

“Is it not obvious, Princess?” Kenobi murmurs. His smile is tired, so tired, but the acceptance she can see in him is a sort of relief, one which sets the Force alight – despite her weeks of tutoring under Luke’s watchful eyes she has never quite seen it like this, diffuse, warm, bright with a light that seems to be awakening and overturning, cautiously enveloping. “I trust you so completely that there is nothing left of myself.”

The simplicity of it astounds her. She looks up at Luke, who nods, and she looks back at what Kenobi has become – and finds herself thinking, perhaps for the first time in her life, that she believes utterly in the idea that something can just _be_.

“We will not fail you,” Luke says, so calm, so unlike the boy Leia had first met (and yet so obvious, as though this part of him had been waiting for them both ever since they were born and separated). He puts a hand on Kenobi’s shoulder, and the Force dances.

“I know,” Kenobi sighs again. _And so do they_ , he whispers to Leia; _or they would not have let me go_.

Leia looks at the blazes of stars, at the blinding white light that so rapidly fills her vision.

 _I miss you_ , she thinks, and the light nods, and dims, and leaves them alone to discover what comes next.

*


	6. Variant Five: GOLD

*

Leia had never liked the light on Hoth. It was too bright, the reflection off of ever-pristine snow too blinding. The half-light of the base was always soothing, dim and imperfect as it was, compared to the brief flash of pain that always bolted through her head if she was required to step out onto the surface. She remembers that, in that moment when the tunnel ceiling nearly fell in on her and Han, that there, that was it – she was to be buried in it, and never see anything more.

She dreams of a light like that, the shift after they bring Kenobi back. It is like staring into a sun, of her own reluctant volition, and being unable to close her eyes. Over what feels like hours, her knowledge of it becomes intimate. She can see its shades, its variances: how it muddies here, even if the cloud is infintesimally thin. It folds over onto itself, thickens and matures, spins away again like the creep of sunlight across ice-covered hills. It is eternal, stretching out until it replaces the nothingness that would keep it in.

It is golden at its edges, everywhere: gilded, like the ancient books in her father's library on Alderaan. If she turns to try and catch a glimpse of it, it vanishes.

The Force has had a way with it, since she was first introduced to its mysteries, of putting into feeling sentiments she would be hard-pressed to express in words. One of these is the bone-deep sense of _rightness_ she feels in her duty, one which she had taken pride in, but not fully accepted as something internal and essential to herself, and not some strange otherness to aspire to. She wakes with this feeling now – of acceptance of fate, of certitude, of utter, strange, all-encompassing peace.

Leia slips out from under Han's arm – she dresses, she puts her slim feet into boots which, she remembers absently, she last wore during the evacuation of Hoth (they have stayed with her since, clinging at some times, necessary to the act of her standing upright at others).

When she reaches the detention center, Kenobi's cell is empty – but she feels no sense of alarm. There are few places, she feels, on this ship that she would want to go to had she been reborn, and so her search is short: he is in the Admiral's stateroom above the bridge, in darkness, watching the galaxy spin by with his arms folded across his chest.

“A strange feeling,” he says calmly, as she approaches, not turning – “to see it from the outside once more.”

“Based on the evidence, I'd say you're still closer than you think.”

“Yes.” The smile he has for her is a smirk at its corners, but it reminds her nonetheless of her parents – of the genuine joy they always took in her leaps of logic, even when she was wrong. “It is quite the sensation, is it not? To have glimpsed something so integral to the fabric of the universe.”

“How do you bear it?”

“You must refine the question, Princess.”

Leia pauses, considers; she feels as though she is still half-asleep. “Is it – bearable, being its instrument?”

“Ah.” Kenobi's expression lightens. “You worry for yourself? For Luke?”

“For you. For what you have endured.”

“Then worry not, General.” He looks ever so briefly surprised at himself for saying the word, for reasons she cannot guess at, but he presses on regardless. “I long ago made peace with my various fates.”

She wants to ask him about that – about fate, and what role it seems to have played in bringing them all together, and how it has tossed them and tested them and how, if it were up to her, she would deny its existence and rip its lurking presence out of history itself – but time, it seems, is against them. There are sounds below them, from the bridge; muttering announcements on the tannoys, and when the door swooshes open behind them Leia is not surprised to see Luke there, only his face visible above his dark clothes.

“We are about to come out of hyperspace,” he says politely. “Master, would you care to observe proceedings?”

When Master and Apprentice (what is Luke's title to be, now? Leia wonders, as if it matters, but somehow it seems to) take the bridge together, Leia is the only one who does not stare wide-eyed, and that – _that_ , she thinks, that is something Jedi, to be so aware of one's place that one doesn't need to jockey for position or dissemble or boast. It is a curiously refreshing thought, and one which, after her long years of politics, appeals to her most desperately.

There is a Super Star Destroyer waiting for them when they drop out of hyperspace, the most dangerous by far of the lingering remnants of the Empire they have been chasing. Luke and Kenobi look at each other, and when Obi-Wan takes one of each of their hands Leia feels something terrible and powerful sweep through her, obliterating all but her immediate senses until she is little more than instinct and love.

She wakes up in Han's arms, in the medbay, and though he is angry, is trembling in his fury, she can't help notice the note of wonder in his voice when he tells her how the three of them had stopped it: how the Force had made incoming missiles and blaster bolts miss their mark, spin off into empty space, how the Imperial TIE fighters had buzzed ineffectively around them, as though their shields had been made of  starlight.

And Leia had fainted, and Luke had staggered and panted, and Obi-Wan merely sighed, and stood still, and looked anxiously out of the spaceports at the one TIE fighter which had speared off course so badly at being rebuffed that it careened and exploded into an unguarded hangar bay.

Like he _cared_ , Han spits, and then he is quiet for a long time, just thinking about that, and Leia curls into him and cannot sleep.

She remembers that day very clearly a few years later, when Luke and Obi-Wan return to New Alderaan from a six-month foray into the Outer Rim and she has been Prime Minister of the New Republic for nearly a year. (Obi-Wan jokes about this, on occasion, about how he is out of place in any entity called 'New;' and when she protests, he simply looks at her, and she wants to laugh at the absurdity of it all.) They are filthy and cheerful and Han lifts Luke up into a rib-creaking hug while Obi-Wan gives Leia a data cube on everything they have gathered about slave-trading networks in their time away (those still remaining, and those they have crushed).

She turns it in her hands; wonders, not for the first time, what it must be like for him to retread paths once so destructive.

In fact, she does ask, once, when the Jedi are rebuilt and the Temple restored and she allows herself – for the very first time in her life, at thirty, with her first child in the cradle – to think that she has the certitude, now, and the courage, to consider how she got here.

 _A most interesting question_ , Kenobi writes, eloquently, from his retreat somewhere in the mountains of Naboo (for he finds the universe both wonderful and troubling, now; caught between the oft-remembered exile of his body and the totality of his soul, he has become a shadow, an implied but never-absent spirit). _Once again you must reframe the question, Princess. It is not how I have re-trod these paths: it is how I have re-made them._

 _Besides_ , he finishes, in a small little postscript, hand-scrawled, heavy with fatigue and joy and the weight of prophecy: _if I hadn't, your children would never have forgiven me._

 _Time, my dear,_ Leia can hear him smile, as though he were in the room with her, when she wonders just how deep his involvement might have been in her and their future – _such a flexible, curious creature it is_.

She has not been given more time: she has made it. What it has in store for her, she cannot guess.

But given this example, Leia Skywalker Organa Solo has very little intention of wasting it.

*

**FIN**

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit more of a postscript ending than I had planned, but I hope you enjoy it! And thank you all for sticking with this strangeness. :-)


End file.
